HARSH: Only 64 percent of illegal immigrants arrested by ICE in December had criminal records

At least USA Today isn’t pretending that President Barack Obama, whose administration put kids in cages, wanted to abolish ICE. Journalists have a tough time remembering the Obama years, but he was criticized consistently from the Left as being the “Deporter in Chief.”

But USA Today would like to put a kinder, gentler spin on Obama’s track record with ICE. During his administration, ICE arrests of illegal aliens with criminal records peaked at 89 percent, while in December, under President Trump, only 63.5 percent of those arrested had criminal records.

NEW: ICE sets record for arrests of undocumented immigrants with no criminal record. 63.5% of ICE arrests in December had criminal record, lowest figure on record. Under Obama, ICE peaked at 89% and was at 82% in his final month in office. https://t.co/glMKtpLDmN via @usatoday

Again, that’s only 63.5 percent of people in the country illegally who had criminal records. “That means 36.5 percent of the arrests were simply undocumented with no criminal history,” writes Alan Gomez.

Under Obama, ICE agents pursuing a specific undocumented immigrant with a criminal record were under orders not to round up everyone else they found along the way. That meant ICE agents raiding a house to find an undocumented immigrant with a violent criminal record, for example, were not supposed to question everyone else living there about their immigration status.

Through a series of Homeland Security memos issued in February 2017, one month after Trump took office, those restrictions were removed.

… Time and again, President Obama has promised to deport only the “criminals” and “gangbangers.” But numbers speak louder than words.

A recent analysis by a policy group at Syracuse University found that just 12% of the deportees in 2013 had been convicted of a crime that ICE considers “serious.” What’s more, over 100,000 people were deported for either traffic violations or illegal entry, which is a petty misdemeanor.

Last year was no fluke. Twenty percent of the more than 2.3 million people deported since the start of the Obama administration were convicted of nothing more than traffic or immigration offenses.

So, while the USA Today piece says Trump was going to target “bad hombres,” Obama said he was going to target “gangbangers,” but deported those convicted of “nothing more than” immigration offenses. Huh.

And he put kids in cages too.

Related:

Illegal immigrant ordered detained by ICE 9 times arrested for murder of Bambi Larson in San Jose https://t.co/rljibT75nk